Alba Renai, an attractive digital influencer powered by artificial intelligence, recently announced that she will be hosting a special segment on Spain’s version of popular reality show ‘Survivor’.

Created in the fall of last year by Be a Lion, a subsidiary of television giant Mediaset Spain, Alba Renai quickly became an Instagram celebrity, attracting over 10,000 fans on Instagram. She is a beautiful young woman, only she is not actually real, but the result of AI-powered image generation based on the results of a focus group of 350 young adults who were asked about the physical and personality attributes they find most important, and the team at Be a Lion used this data to create an avatar that would appeal to as many people as possible. But what really catapulted Alba Renai into the public eye was the news that she would be hosting a special segment on Spain’s version of ‘Survivor.

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A Spanish woman sparked controversy after claiming that dripping urine into her eyes cured her myopia and astigmatism.

Urine therapy or urotherapy is a form of alternative medicine popularized by British naturopath John W. Armstrong in the early 20th century. Advocates of this unusual form of therapy promote the application of human urine for medicinal or cosmetic purposes, including massaging one’s skin, or gums, with one’s urine, and even drinking it. However, TikTok user and “assistant metaphysical counselor” Suama Fraile claims that urine is also much better at treating eye problems than the chemical-infused medicine prescribed by most doctors. The woman claims to have dripped urine into her eyes daily until it cured her astigmatism and myopia.

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Emily Pellegrini has only been on Instagram for four months, but she already has nearly 150,000 fans showering her with compliments and date invitations. Only she’s not a real person…

AI-generated social media influencers are on a tear these days. A couple of months ago, we featured Aitana Lopez, aka Fit Aitana, a Spanish model who had amassed a following of around 110,000 people on Instagram in four months despite only existing in the digital world. She was the creation of a communication agency, but she looked just like a real person. It turns out that she was only one of many hyperrealistic digital avatars taking social media by storm and making their creators fortunes in advertising, sponsorships and paid personalized content. Emily Pellegrini, a digital model based on the guidelines of ChatGPT, has been getting a lot of attention in the media recently, sparking controversy in the process.

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Aitana Lopez, aka Fit Aitana, has only been on Instagram for four months, but she already has over 110,000 followers and generates over $4,000 in monthly revenue. Not bad for someone who doesn’t exist.

Virtual models have been around for a few years now, and the advent of artificial intelligence has only made them more realistic and more popular. One standout representative of this new wave of AI-created digital influencers is Aitana, a cute, pink-haired female model from Barcelona who has managed to attract over 100k followers in just a few months. She only posts photos of her, since video is likely to make her digital form a bit too obvious, but every one of her photos garners tens of thousands of likes and hundreds of comments. Her popularity has translated into a steady monthly income for her creators, who claim that she generates over 4,000 euros a month.

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Seo Yoo A is an Instagram influencer who rose to fame thanks to her doll-like features enhanced with not-so-subtle digital editing tools and filters.

It’s no secret that Instagram is full of young, attractive influencers who use their God-given or surgically enhanced assets to build a fanbase and gain popularity, but South Korea appears to have launched a whole new trend – digitally enhanced models who aren’t afraid to go all out with the editing. Last week, we featured Shasheile, an influencer whose photos were so heavily edited that people actually found them refreshing, but it turns out she is not the only one using this unusual social media technique. Seo Yoo A is another rising Instagram star whose conspicuous use of Photoshop and other editing tools has won her hundreds of thousands of fans.

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A South Korean social media influencer has been conquering the internet with photos so heavily edited that people can’t help but like them.

Female influencers flaunting their God-given or surgically-enhanced physical attributes on social media have been dominating social media for quite a few years now, and while many of them rely on filters and Photoshop skills to digitally alter their appearance, they go out of their way to be as inconspicuous about it as possible. So when one influencer comes along and is not only up-front about digitally manipulating her social media pictures, but actually goes over the top with the editing, people apparently find it surprisingly refreshing. At least that’s one way to explain the rising popularity of Shasheile, a South Korean girl whose ridiculous-looking physique is obviously the result of digital editing.

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Three popular influencers were recently sentenced to over three years in a Russian penal colony for pranking the driver of a ride-sharing company by pretending to steal his car.

In March of 2021, the three bloggers decided to pull another one of their popular pranks and then post the footage on social media. They called an Uber-type taxi, and two of them got in the car and asked the driver to help their friend load some baggage in the trunk. When the driver got out of the vehicle, one of them got behind the wheel and drove off. The whole thing was caught on camera by one of their accomplices, who was filming from a few meters away, only to the driver, this seemed like an actual car theft, so by the time the vloggers brought the car back and explained that it had all been a joke, the police had already been notified. And they didn’t find the prank funny at all.

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Mexican influencer Lore Garza caused quite the controversy online last week when she announced that the winner of the brand new KIA SUV she was raffling was her own mother…

Lore Garza, a popular Mexican social media personality with over 140,000 fans on Instagram alone, has been getting a lot of attention from news outlets over the past couple of weeks because of her latest attempt of “giving back” to her fans. In one of her most daring promotional efforts yet, Garza announced a raffle for a brand new KIA SUV. Anyone could enter for a chance to win, as long as they bought one or more tickets worth 350 pesos ($17). The raffle generated a lot of interest, so a lot of people tuned in to see who won the car, only to be left with their mouths opened when it was announced that Lore Garza’s own mother was the winner…

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A Ukrainian tiktoker who filmed himself giving a young girl on the street a new smartphone to get views on the popular video app, only to ask for it back once the “touching” scene was filmed, has sparked outrage on social media.

From pulling cruel pranks on unsuspecting bystanders, to renting studios to make themselves look richer, there’s not a lot modern online influencers won’t do for clicks and views. But one young influencer in Russia crossed the line when he decided to heartlessly deceive a young girl by making her think she was getting a new smartphone for free, only to then ask for it back, claiming it was just props for a TikTok video. Things got really bad when the child understandably refused to hand over her gift.

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HayanTree, a popular restaurant and food reviewer on YouTube, has recently come under fire for causing a restaurant to close down after his false review negatively affected the business.

On December 7, HayanTree, who at the time sported just over 700,000 subscribers on YouTube, posted a video review of an all-you-can-eat soy sauce-marinated crab restaurant in Daegu. At one point, the popular YouTuber refills his plate, but notices grains of rice in his marinade, raising the suspicion that the restaurant might be reusing its unsold food. The controversial review quickly went viral, getting over 1 million views in a matter of days, and impacted the accused restaurant so profoundly that it had to be closed down a few days later.

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We all know many of the stars and online influencers we follow on social media use all kinds of tricks to enhance their image, but a recent Chinese duo revealed just how far digital editing can go, by comparing their altered social media photos to the original versions.

Exposing online idols has been a very popular pastime on Chinese social media lately, with dozens of reported cases of internet celebrities with thousands, sometimes millions of followers exposed as frauds after accidentally turning off their filters and revealing themselves as looking totally different than what their fans thought. But this story is about a peculiar case involving a pair of social media idols who recently exposed themselves, by comparing the original photos of themselves to the altered ones that they usually posted on their profiles.

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